International Trader - Asia

Forget Yahoo! Softbank Is the Alibaba Play

The big Japanese tech could make as much as $57 billion on its stake.

Much of the U.S. press coverage of Chinese e-commerce power Alibaba's upcoming initial public offering has focused on Yahoo! and the value of its 22.6% stake. A better place for investors to look is Japan's Softbank, which has a 34.4% position in Alibaba and a stronger underlying business.

Softbank founder Masayoshi Son can appreciate the challenges Yahoo! executives face as they try to find a growing role in the search business. At the height of the dot-com boom in 2000, Son was briefly the world's richest man. His...